Money and Banking

Economic Crisis Worsens …

Testifying before a Congressional committee in Washington July 10, 2008 both Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called for more powers to address the current economic crisis which is worsening, particularly in the financial area of the economy. With many large financial financial institutions lurching toward the abyss, the call for the government to “do something” is becoming resounding. Trouble is it is calling for the government to solve the problem that they were instrumental in creating in the first place seems facetious.

The Federal Reserve was created almost 95 years ago, signed into law by then President Woodrow Wilson on |December 22, 1913. The FED has presided over economic crises for most of the last century. From the booming ‘Roaring Twenties’, to the stock market crash of October 1929 and into the Great Depression of the 1930′s the Central Bank has had its hand on the wheel. Going from bad to worse in terms of severity, we are today in the midst of the latest caused by the sub-prime meltdown which is having repercussions across the entire financial system, which more and more seems to be a house of cards, which may ultimately collapse.

Calling for more medicine of the government interference variety to cure what ails the financial system today is like calling for more of the poison that has caused the ailment of the patient in the first place. There is no call for sound money and banking principles, but just to leave in tact the Central Banking system which has been gamed by the players in the financial institutions to their benefit, with financial chicanery that allowed them to make huge bets on markets with highly leveraged creativity. When markets did not respond the way these leveraged bettors anticipated, suddenly we were again in the midst of another financial crisis.

That a Treasury Secretary comes to his position from a Wall Street banking firm, who knows from the inside out the financial flim-flam these self-serving bankers have used to benefit themselves, now calls for the government to expand its power and influence over an already over-regulated and over-governed economy, it should be obvious to all that this isn’t a fix for the problem, but rather an overt attempt by the proponents of expanding state power – and diminishing freedom and individual rights – to destroy what remains of freedom.

Financial Post Letter

Fed to blame

Financial Post Published: Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Re: Does it Really Matter who is President?, William Watson, April 3

William Watson makes an excellent point that President George W. Bush “entered office more ideological and less interventionist than any of his recent predecessors,” but has ended up seeming to have abandoned the original perceptions, while also abandoning those that elected him because of those perceptions. Was he hamstrung and stymied by “constraints of … inherited structures and interests”? Well, maybe …

Firstly, I’ll be more blunt and call those inherited structures and interests exactly what they are: A deeply entrenched political bureaucracy which is the real power behind the throne, so to speak, ultimately bending elected officials to its manipulative commands. One could cut G.W. Bush some slack and recognize he has paid a price for not doing something to expose these powers behind the throne–and that price is the carefully crafted media image of a President flummoxed and out of his depth, becoming a figure of ridicule. After Mr. Bush is long gone, this entrenched bureaucracy will live on, and the same scene will replay over again with whoever is elected as the new President.

Mr. Bush has become any easy punching bag, easily vilified and Diane Francis points to the overly ambitious Eliot Spitzer traveling to Washington to make some easy political points by pointing his sanctimonious and hypocritical finger at him as being the cause of the current subprime meltdown. Whatever direct influence Bush may have had in that is questionable.

Statists like Mr. Spitzer demand more economic interference and financial regulation, while pretending that an unregulated financial market actually exists. This type of straw-man argument scores political points, even if the reality contradicts their assertions. No free financial market has existed in the United States since the creation of the Federal Reserve, when the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on Dec. 22, 1913.

A quasi-governmental agency that is deeply politically directed, since Fed governors must be politically approved. The Fed manipulates interest rates and regulates the money supply, fundamentally powerful state directed functions, and deleterious to all freedom.

Unedited Version of NP Letter(March 24, 2008)

The U.S. Federal Reserve was established in 1913, signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. The FED was to be based on the European model of centralized banking in which the state becomes involved directly in the day to day economic activities on the nation. Although opposed by some who mistrusted government intrusion on such a scale into the economy, it was supported by the “Progressive” Democrats who desired the creation of an agency to end the alleged Wall Street control of the monetary policy of the country. Even then Wall Street and capitalism represented a popular scapegoat to be stereotyped as the villainous cause of economic misery, which could be rectified by creating a new government bureaucracy.

It can be argued that since the creation of the FED that periodic economic crises have worsened. The causes can be argued but that economic crises have occurred AFTER the creation of the FED is not arguable. The declared reasons for creating the FED not resolved the problems of economic uncertainty which it was argued would be resolved by creating the FED. While the FED may not have caused the Great Depression, economists, such as Milton Friedman, state that it did exacerbate the effects of the depression with its interference in manipulating the money supply and interest rates.

From the economic boom times of the 1920’s which were times of rapid economic expansion leading to the Great Depression of the 1930’s, the FED has established a long enough history over the ensuing decades to at least question its efficiency and its reasons for a continued existence. Economists such as John Maynard Keynes and John Kenneth Galbraith, advocating for state bureaucratic interference in the economy have always been embraced by the so-called progressive politics of those seeing the state as the vehicle for benevolence and largesse to constituents seeking a hand out, while being opposed by those that recognize the simple truth that expanding government bureaucratic interference diminished individual liberty, while undercutting the character trait of self-reliance and personal responsibility.

The Bretton Woods agreement was ratified by many nations of the world and became operational in 1946. The agreement established the exchange rate of each country’s currency within an agreed upon band of fluctuation, attempting to establish a stable currency exchange rate in terms of gold between currencies of the nations ratifying the agreement. The Bretton Woods agreement collapsed in 1971 as the system became increasingly unworkable, and the United States suspended the convertibility of its dollars into gold.

By increasing the dollars in circulation the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury create inflation, where cheapened government created dollars decrease the value of the dollar while increasing the price of the goods and service being purchased.

Abolish the Federal Reserve

• No country has succeeded in the world by debasing its currency.
• Increasing the money supply devalues the currency.
• Inflation is not good for the world – money supply increases causes price of goods and services to rise.
• Raising interest rates increases the cost of borrowing and slows business activity and expansion.
• The FED policy of manipulating interest rates and the currency has been an ongoing mandate since it was legislatively created December 22, 1913.
• Government bailing out troubled businesses is not capitalism but socialism for the rich.

Solve the problem by abolishing the FED and restoring a free market discipline to the banking and credit markets.

In this CNBC interview Jim Rogers unequivocally calls for the FED to be abolished and for the resignation of Ben Bernanke.

The Capitalist Conspiracy

The correct way to view history, particularly recent history, is as a series of interrelated events from a point in time, rather than as a series of isolated and unrelated events. Recent history beginning with the onset of World War I in 1914 can be looked at in this way. 1914 marks the beginning of a new age of desensitization of the human mind to the unleashing of the brutal horrors of inhumanity of man to mankind and human life in general in this world. The two world wars and many smaller conflagrations of the 20th Century are hallmarks to the bloodiest century in the history of mankind.

The desire of some men to rule over others and impose their will upon others through force or powerful institutions have been ideologically driven – and this has been most obvious during the period from 1914 to the present. Powerful ideologically driven systems of tyranny become accepted by the masses when they can be hoodwinked into accepting the ideas of those seeking to motivate and control the larger society. Lenin did this in Russia during the communist revolution of 1917. Stalin carried this horrific tyranny forward by refining what Lenin had begun. Hitler, too, was able to mobilize and motivate a country by manipulating emotionally the inner man residing in Germany after Hitler’s rise in 1932.

But predating the rise of European despots and tyrants, a noteworthy event occurred within the United States of America. The Federal Reserve was created when legislation was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson enabling the creation of this quasi-governmental central banking system. A system which put into the hands of a group of individuals the power to manipulate the interest rates and regulate the creation and flow of currency within the country, and by extension the power to manipulate other sovereign countries with which it traded.

This video exposes some noteworthy information which should be disseminated to a broad spectrum of the population, especially those who respect the ideals of the original Founding Fathers of America, the writers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America. Why did President Woodrow Wilson state that he had “betrayed his country” as he lay on his death bed?

This video deigns to step forward to answer this question …

Actions Speak Louder Than Words …

Since actions speak louder than words, the surest way to know the heart of a human being is to recognize and understand the actions of human beings in a proper context. Words may be just so much empty rhetoric used by hypocrites to deceive the gullible into believing their lies.

Observing the contorted facial expressions, primitive and hate filled, blindly following the exhortations of the religious leaders or Islamic “scholars”, tell more about the true nature of this followers of this ideology that the pious phraseology they espouse.

Attacking civilian targets that allegedly represent the decadent enemy of the religion, pretending their depravity is somehow morally justified because they are the true representatives of Islam, exposes the lie contained in their religious rhetoric.

Cheering the deaths of 3000 American civilians on 911 and passing out candy on the streets to celebrate this act of deliberate act of mass murder is just plain psychotic.

Somehow, those that profess to be pious religious and devout and observing Muslims, living within our Western cultures have not stepped forward to condemn these atrocities, but instead play word games and argue about observing the true meaning of the religion and attempt to vilify those that have known the religion from the inside, having been born into it.

Even more ridiculous is the attempt to portray Islam in a more favorable light by those that were not born into Islam, but converted to it later in life. More can be learned from these that have had the courage to walk out the door of the religion because they discovered the true primitive barbaric brutality with which it consumes the lives of those within it, and seeks to consume the lives of those outside of it because they are considered infidels.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul …

How did we get to the point in our supposedly civilized world where people – the citizens – of most countries actually expect politicians to provide a solution to their everyday problems?

Politicians promise solutions which require the creation of a government bureaucracy in order to “study” the issue and provide their “solution”. Inevitably the bureaucracy requires more people and more money to “solve the problem”.

The reciprocally reinforcing daisy-chain effect of politicians perceiving problems for which they just happen to have the solution, requiring expanded bureaucratic manpower, and pandering to those that actually believe that those two groups can solve any problem is one of the ironies of our age. They operate on the principle which George Bernard Shaw eloquently identified: “When robbing Peter to pay Paul, you can count on the support of Paul”.

Whatever one’s opinion of former American President Ronald Reagan is, he did have plenty of experience in both government and private enterprise. He knew that those that believed the promise employed in the phrase :”I’m here from the government and I’m here to help”, were suckers ready to be duped out of the most valued thing America had to offer – a recognition by the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, that envisioned the primacy of life and the freedom to choose the way in which your life can be lived by enshrining constitutional rights of the individual and the limited power of the government to destroy those rights by imposing its power into the life of the individual.

Stumbling forward into a future in which citizens readily embrace the empty political promises, which are made with the implied promise that the government can and will solve personal problems, is mind-numbingly suicidal, unless slavery is seen as being preferable to freedom and personal responsibility.

The Eagles

Reproducing a sound in live performance which equals the studio produced sounds of a bands music is something musicians should strive to accomplish. When they do it is both remarkable and noteworthy.

Staying on the theme of eagles, such a group of musicians is The Eagles and their DVD, “Farewell Tour 1: Live From Melbourne” is a perfect example of this. The Eagles recorded a late 2004 live performance in Melbourne, Australia with a mix of the groups music from its early days in the 1970’s onward through the break-up and solo efforts of some members of the band, most notably Don Henley, Glen Frey and Joe Walsh to carry on after the break-up.

The group has changed over the years having to overcome internal conflicts which led to the break-up. The DVD and live performance gives each member of the group to contribute vocally as well as display a considerable versatility in creating a superb end product for which accolades are in order. With 30 cuts spanning the early hits to an introduction of a couple of new efforts The Eagles have captured a live performance which enhances the music with the magic of the atmosphere of existing in the venue between the group and the audience, a reciprocal love affair with the common connection of the music of the band.

Henley’s hits after of his early years with The Eagles, “The Boys of Summer” and “Dirty Laundry” are there along with the hits from the early years of the group, “The Long Run”, ”One of These Nights” and “Hotel California”. If you are a fan of The Eagles, or even if you are not, this live performance is a worthwhile performance, simply because of the phenomenon of capturing time and lightening in a bottle at the same time.

Eagles and Budgies

Eagles are seen as symbolic of the free spirit with which all human life has been born. Soaring high above the Earth and able to see farther from their exalted station, represent the opposite of the domesticated fowl or the caged pet budgie chirping at the sun but never able to soar above the Earth in the skies in the domain to the eagle.

Our world today, seeks to train budgies who will chirp on command the notes for which they have been trained. From cradle to grave the independent spirit is harnessed in the halls of the budgie trainers. Destroying the independent spirit and ability of the individual to be a responsible human being is the work of these statist creators of a “brave new world”, with subjects unable to think or act, unless by permission.